Excelsior or Thomas Edison

Unfortunately, GRE no longer appears to offer the History Exam. (At least they do not list it on their web site.)

If they did it would make the choice of schools much easier for me.

I thought you had done some credit by portfolio?

David

 

Gary,

Did you challenge any portion of your credits by portfolio?

David

 

'Tis well and truly gone, David. I sat for the exam at the final time it was offered, in April of 2000.

Not me. My credits were from ACE-approved transfers (mostly from the Insurance Institute of America) and CLEP, DANTES, and GRE Subject exams. I'm currently taking my one and only online course, ENG301 Power Writing, from Charter Oak State College.

Regards,


Tony

 

Umm...makes me wish I had gone that route. Just couldn't make a business case for it in my market.

Our situations are very similar. Almost parallel but for that. Even to goals (per your other posts).

Wish you the best in your new career!

David

 

As I am asking this question myself this topic is dear to my heart. For my opinion, it appears to be a question of whether you will be advantaged by challenging your credits by exam alone or by exam and portfolio. With portfolio favoring TESC and exams favoring Excelsior.

What I find irritating is that there doesn't appear to be any way of evaluating this other than by enrolling and doing it. Presumably at that point an error could be corrected, but at what cost. <sigh>

David

 

Lawrie,

I raised this issue in a conversation with an "admissions specialist" at TESC yesterday. I asked her how TESC graduates worked around this problem.

She said that if you are their BA/BS graduate and ask for it, they will provide you with a GPA. From what hat they will pull this from I declined to ask.

Have to agree with you on names.

David

 

Hi, David. All of my credit so far has been transfer credit, though I will be taking four exams. I considered portfolio credit, but I was already so close to finishing my degree that it seemed like less hassle to just take some courses and exams.

 

Thank you for that nugget, David. I can find nothing about this in the TESC literature (maybe it appears in the student handbook?). The TESC catalog makes it abundantly clear, exam and portfolio credit will NOT be transcribed other than as credit (CR)*. So I guess they'd have to go back through a graduate's records, pull the exam standard scores (if they keep them at all**), compare that to the base pass score for that exam (usually the ACE recommended score), then work up from there to produce a banded grading. They would have to do that separately for each exam. Presumably they then would calculate an overall GPA, based on all courses on the transcript. Problem is, most graduate schools calculate GPA themselves on some fraction of the total transcript. A common minimum requirement is a GPA of 3.00 in the last 60 hours of credit earned, though there are also other standards with differing minimum GPA and credit hours over which GPA is calculated. There can also be program requirements that certain undergraduate courses have been passed with some grade higher than a "C". If all that is released is an undifferentiated GPA, it's not clear how that could be ascertained.

What is really required is that the banded grades be transcribed. It would also be helpful if TESC would put this ad hoc procedure on a more formal footing by way of some readily available document.

* See TESC catalog pages 21, 99

http://www.tesc.edu/catalog/pdf/catalog.pdf

[Note that traditional course credit is awarded graded credit, issue here is exam letter grading]

** The will of course have complete records of the performance in TESC proprietary TECEP exams.

 

Thanks for the kind words, David. I was fortunate in being able to transfer my IIA/CPCU credits. I should finish the Bachelor's degree by June, and I hope to sandwich in the last Part of CPCU (the dreaded Part 8!) before starting a Master's program later in the year.

I should mention that I'm not quite bailing out of my current career; I'd like to teach as an adjunct while still in business, perhaps teaching full-time some years down the road. Unless I win the lottery. Or go to law school.

Regards,


Tony